In Glasgow on Saturday February 7, the Scottish Women’s Convention (SWC) provided a golden opportunity to celebrate women’s representation in Scottish public life.

With the trade union movement at the heart of the 50/50 gender equality campaign in the 1980s and ’90s, trade unionist women’s voices took centre stage.

Glasgow TUC member Jane McKay paid credit to the tenacity of all involved. Devolution and the Scottish Parliament in 1999 brought opportunities for different institutions and different ways of working.

The four guiding principles on which the Scottish Parliament was formed still hold true today: accountability, being open and participative, sharing power among government, Parliament and the people and a commitment throughout to equal opportunities and fairness.

The call for 50/50 gender representation has been heard and supported throughout Scotland, and when the new parliament convened in 1999 over 37 per cent of the 129 MSPs were female.

In 2003 this rose to 39 per cent. While subsequent parliaments have seen a drop in those numbers, the message from Saturday’s conference was clear — women will organise, supporting each other and encouraging others and arguing for the introduction of special measure when necessary, with the goal of 50/50 still central.

That demand of 50/50 representation includes recognition of women’s lives in all our diversity, and therefore must also include steps to better represent women from all communities.

We entered 2015 with the first female First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon MSP, and with a 50/50 balance within the SNP government’s cabinet.

The Scottish Labour Party shadow cabinet at Holyrood also has a 50/50 balance among its members, and deputy leader Kezia Dugdale MSP has been speaking for Labour at First Minister’s Questions in the Scottish Parliament chamber every Thursday.

With Ruth Davidson MSP leading the Scottish Conservatives, this makes women’s voices a majority at Question Time, and Saturday’s conference endorsed Dugdale’s call for a legacy in Scotland that ensured quotas for all public boards, and a 50/50 approach to public life.

Scottish government Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning Angela Constance MSP paid tribute to the women who had made it possible for her to enter parliament herself in 2007, hailing the provision of a creche for the children of staff and visitors in the new parliament building.

She reiterated the commitments by Scottish government to press for legislation on quotas on representation as appropriate.

Former Scottish Labour Party leader Johann Lamont MSP was herself elected to parliament in 1999 as part of Labour’s commitment to twinning the constituency seats and guaranteeing equal representation among its parliamentary group, reminded the SWC conference of the Scottish Labour Party parliamentary group at Westminster in 1987, which returned 50 MPs from Scotland — only one of whom was a woman, Maria Fyfe.

The 1980s were a time of change in communities, trade unions and institutions, and tribute should be paid to all the women who campaigned for childcare, for the miners’ families, for access to apprenticeships and jobs and against violence against women. Forty years on from the establishment of Women’s Aid, while paying tribute we also have to recognise that women’s lives

are not yet free from violence and abuse, and there is still work to be done.

McKay referenced the work being done within the trade union movement too throughout the last century. By 1982, the rules changed to ensure reserved seats for women on the STUC general council, and trade unions were establishing their own women’s committees and policies on equality, health and safety for women, sexual harassment and workplace bullying.

Today the STUC general council has a majority of female members, and alternates the post of president each year between a man and a woman, with the current president June Minnery from GMB.

The STUC Women’s Conference report from Dumfries in 1965 records a number of women’s advisory committee proposals, including one that the “general council should use the services of the women’s advisory committee more frequently, especially when items relating to women are under consideration.”

The committee also asked: “When the general council are approached by the government and other organisations to submit names of trade unionists for appointment to national bodies, what consideration is given to women trade unionists being included in the nominations?”

While the names of the women may not always be known or recorded in our history books or in the media, there is no doubt that all those women have shaped Scotland’s current political landscape.

There is much to be proud of, and the resurgence of interest in women’s history — particularly within the labour movement — will increase our confidence for the future.

Approaching International Women’s Day on March 8 this year, we can recognise that positive action and quotas can be used to accelerate the necessary change for parliaments, governments, public bodies and civic organisations to more accurately represent the society in which we live.

Women’s visibility will build confidence and opportunities for our daughters and granddaughters, but it must be representation for a purpose — for bolder policies which will really redress the economic inequality that perpetuates division and poverty, and to remove the violence and harassment that still casts a long shadow over many women’s lives.

Ann Henderson is assistant secretary of the STUC